With the bovver boot now on the other foot it's time to get young fans back

When Alan Hardaker ruled the Football League as general secretary and generalissimo he had a quick answer to those who wondered what the game was coming to. Hardaker would cross his cavernous office at Lytham St Annes to fetch down a book which declared that if football did not mend its ways the game would be dead in five years. The book was published in 1898.

It is tempting to regard the rumble of discontent about Premiership ticket prices as just another passing moan. Average gates in the Premiership may be down by over 1,000 but this is partly because Birmingham and Sunderland have been replaced by Reading and Watford, who have smaller grounds.

The debate has been prompted by the knowledge that from August, when the new TV deals kick in, Premiership clubs will be getting £900m a season before they even begin to think about gate receipts. The fans believe, not unreasonably, that they should share the windfall by paying less at the turnstiles. Indeed Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan and Middlesbrough have already begun to charge less for certain games. Yet unless the wealthier clubs take up the idea, cheaper Premiership football will be confined to a handful who fear they will lose support unless prices come down. This hardly applies to Manchester United, Arsenal or Chelsea. In an indifferent season Newcastle can still command gates of between 48,000 and 52,000, and Liverpool will get even bigger crowds at their new stadium.

It is clear, nonetheless, that much of the Premiership is charging spectators ticket prices which would have made Stan Flashman blush had that been a physiological possibility. More worryingly, statistics indicate that younger fans can no longer afford to watch. A Premier League survey has revealed that fewer than one in 10 of those going to games are under 24 while the average age has risen to 43.

Well, football always did reflect social patterns and the population is ageing, so what? Had similar statistics been quoted 30 years ago, when hooliganism was rife, the game would have breathed an enormous sigh of relief. The problem then lay in persuading 40-somethings to return to grounds blighted by two decades of violence.

In 1991 the Football Association produced a Blueprint for the Future of Football which virtually sanctioned the idea of a super league, aka the Premier League. The document spoke about changing patterns of affluence in society which made it "almost impossible to formulate any leisure activity as a truly mass market one". Football, therefore, needed to follow "the affluent middle-class consumer". The hoolies, in other words, were to be priced out, which is what has happened.

The Blueprint was published two years after the Hillsborough tragedy which, while it was not caused by hooliganism, was a result of crude methods of crowd control born of 20-odd years of violence on the terraces. The FA called for all-seat stadiums and, in the wake of the Taylor Report, the clubs complied.

While the Football Trust and the Sky windfall helped with the finances, there was still much to be paid for. So admission prices rose, the Bosman case turned a steady trickle of foreign imports into a tidal wave, wage bills became stratospheric and the cost of going to games rose further still.

Now the Premier League faces the ironic situation that, whereas once the preponderance of young fans, with violent habits, was a matter for despair it is now the absence of youthful support which is causing concern. This assumes, of course, that the junior section of society has mended its ways, although the average town centre on a Saturday night would suggest otherwise.

There will not be a Gadarene rush to lower admission charges; upfront income from season tickets is still vital. Even with a capacity of 76,212 Old Trafford still cannot accommodate all those who want to watch Manchester United, Arsenal have a new stadium to pay for and Chelsea need to keep their millionaires' dressing room in the manner to which it is accustomed. Some clubs with lesser teams may have to cut prices to keep their support at its present level - watching Watford this season has been a form of community service - but most of the new TV money will end up with the players, not to mention their agents.

Premier League gates may have dipped but look at how many people were watching some First Division matches in, say, March 1989: 36,000 at Manchester United, 21,000 at Newcastle, 19,000 at Tottenham, 15,000 at Aston Villa and West Ham. The entertainment may have been cheap but its circumstances, slum grounds with slum behaviour, were often nasty.